


sun mote in stained glass

by Grand_Phoenix



Series: Warcraft Drabbles, Short Stories, and Other Such Things [46]
Category: World of Warcraft
Genre: Aftermath, Hopeful Ending, Implied Future Romance, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Light Angst, Self-Reflection, but he's also kind of exhausted from the post-raid so YMMV on interpretation, for minor canon NPCs, mubiru might be catching feels here, taking some creative liberties with loot drops ahoy!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-11
Updated: 2021-02-11
Packaged: 2021-03-18 04:15:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,625
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29362368
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Grand_Phoenix/pseuds/Grand_Phoenix
Summary: After everything that's happened, who - or what - do we say about ourselves? Is there even an answer? (Or, a Zandalari Prelate reflects in the gloom of Kings' Rest, in the wake of the Alliance's assault.) [BfA era, post-Battle of Dazar'alor]
Relationships: Male Zandalari Troll & Female Blood Elf
Series: Warcraft Drabbles, Short Stories, and Other Such Things [46]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/971712





	sun mote in stained glass

**Author's Note:**

> This is another story that's been sitting on the backlog/the current USB drive, its last, true update being 4/12/2019 before I looked through my Tumblr page for WIPs to work on (and that more recent update is listed on the document as 2/4/2021. It's a sequel to _In The Gloom, There Lies A Seed_ , taking place after the Dazar'alor raid that offers a brief, quick peek into the MC's mind regarding the aftermath.
> 
> I'm on the fence where it concerns writing OC fics. I certainly don't _mind_ writing them, but from my experience these fics don't generate as much interest as you would with fics featuring canon characters (and that includes the Alliance and Horde PCs, which I say would be semi-canon at best depending on which media you're looking at, i.e. books vs. game). Plus with these two OCs I don't have a concrete plan for them beyond "let's take a look at them get closer, do things to each other, and establish a consensual, romantic relationship that some elves and Zandalari would probably find blasphemous because elves and Zandalari have fought one another in the past but M and N don't care in the end because all that matters is each other". Mubiru and Narina (as well as Albanii, the DK OC from _The Hard Way Is Just As Easy_ ) are more of the "they're just there" variety than with my other OC, Mishka, whose entire shtick is just going from place to place interacting NPCs with her hunter pets that also contribute to the narrative in their own way.
> 
> Actually I was surprised to see _In The Gloom_ got as many hits and kudos as it did, because I _struggled_ writing it and nearly scrapped it, so apparently some readers liked it lol And I did promise myself I would go through my backlog (if somewhat monumentally slowly, good job dealing with life, Grand!), so this is par for the course in clearing it out.
> 
> I had thought to make this story longer, but ultimately decided against it. Sometimes a fic doesn't need to be long any more than it's worth its word count.

_What are we now?_

_Who are we now?_

It’s long been past the point where Mubiru doesn’t know—nor cares—if he’s asking himself that or the kings and queens of old interred in this cold, lonely tomb. Quiet, too, after the Horde quelled their hearts of madness and corruption. Since then, the shadows have clung thick like gossamer everywhere. Now they are darker, darker than they had ever been before, no longer static but thick like miasma and sticky as spider silk.

He presses the tip of the incense stick, smoldering more smoke than fire now, to the rest of the reeds in the pot with slow, mechanical progression. Then he digs the stick as far as it goes into the center, lets go, and draws his hand back to his lap.

Mubiru breathes deep through his nose. Silverleaf and peacebloom, she told him, that sets to make his ears buzz, starting from just above the hinges of his lower jaw and up the back of his skull to sink and settle in the mire of his brain. A couple more bundles, fresh from the market, and his perception of reality would’ve tipped just a little to the side, maybe a little upside-down, right itself and back again in a trefoil knot.

It’s pleasant, all things considered.

Sweet.

_What do you suppose this makes us now?_ High Prelate Rata poses to him. It’s the night after the Alliance were driven off the coast, tail between their legs but their jaws and talons lathered in blood. Everyone that’s still able to move and not have their hands full are doing another sweep of the harbor, picking up bodies—the arms and the legs and the chipped tusks with the gold rings still attached to them littering the floor--to toss onto carts that will carry them to the pyres to be burned. There are so many of them, alive just as they are dead.

There are other fires burning all around him. Bonfires piled high with wooden barricades too notched and scorched in all manner of magic residue and ballistics; in between, curling black and turning to ash are the faces of gold lions on blue cloth, the gunmetal grey anchor of the Kul Tiran navy, all the factions that have aligned with the High King, the wolfman, and the Lord Admiral. There are no bodies; most have been tossed into the sea for the sharks and threshers to feast on. Others, however, such as the night elves, were dragged away into the starless dark, toward the Sliver.

He sniffs, grimaces at the lurch his stomach makes. He reminds himself to avoid the Taste of Zandalar and the Zocalo for the rest of the week and all of the next, if he can help it. (Time has come and gone. He hasn’t; only news of the Princess’s coronation ceremony has forced him to return to society, away from the damp jungle and undergrowth where he is normally stationed at.)

“First Rezan, now the King….” Rata sighs, runs her hands through her hair. Fingers wrapped around the strands, she makes no motion to pull at them like she usually does when she’s frustrated (or bored, when no one’s looking and it’s a slow, peaceful day in the Halls). Her gaze is faraway but not unfocused as Mubiru’s seen on many other faces.

“We still have the princess,” Mubiru offers.

“Yes,” says Rata.

“And the Horde,” he adds.

“Yes. The Horde.”

They stood together like that for a while. How long, Mubiru reflects, he can’t remember; probably ten minutes, maybe less. Unmoving, breathing, watching everyone trundle about in a daze. Some were gathered about the smaller fires, standing or sitting, staring into the flames.

“Is this it?” Rata asks.

“Hmm?”

“Is this it?”

“Is what it?”

“The end. For us. For everyone.” She looks at him. “We failed the Horde, our king, our faith. But most of all, we failed ourselves.” She turns back to the fires. “We were the crowned jewel of the seas. Greater than the mogu. Greater than Kul Tiras. Now we are a kingdom of ruin and decay. What use will the Warchief have of us now?”

“All the world’s a ruin, High Prelate. We just make the best of what we have.”

Rata makes a small, quiet sound with the click of her tongue, shakes her head. However, her expression remains the same. “What best? Our navy is in shambles, our people in disarray. There has not been this much blood and decay in the air since the Cataclysm.”

“If the loa can climb over mountains, I think we can, too.”

“A mountain made of bones will surely topple!”

“We’ve climbed worse.”

“You forget who is leading the Horde, Mubiru.”

“I haven’t forgotten, High Prelate.” He pauses. “I just--”

_Just what?_ Mubiru stops, arm outstretched just shy of the last of the incense sticks, fingers clasped around the reed; its tip cherry red, exuding a slender tendril of smoke. _What comes next?_

Sitting here, all by himself in the dark surrounded by the dim glow of the distant sconce-light, he hears for the first time how quiet, how still, the mausoleum of kings and queens past is. His heartbeat drums softly beneath the meat of his chest. His breath, sliding into his lungs and spilling out into the open again in slow, quiet exhalations.

Sounds, slipping away into eternity. Lost and drifting evermore.

A drop of condensation plunks somewhere out of sight.

His eyes flick up to the tablet in front of him. The Zandali is worn, almost scrubbed clean from a lifetime of condensation and mildew. What little he can read attempts to regale the exploits the ruler committed during their tenure across the South Seas, presumably during a period of conflict or adventure. There’s a casket with the lid pried ajar, but whether or not Zul had defiled it no longer matters to him; Mubiru wagers there’s not even the bones and scraps of armor remain.

They probably know—all of them, whether or not they were desecrated. The stink of dark magic, blood and shadow, never truly goes away no matter how times the Prelates cleanse the catacombs. Once, Rezan’s light would have pushed it back and filled the halls with an earthy musk that always hearkens to that deep-seated, primordial reminder that what comes from the land must always return to the land. One last duty to fulfill, for loa and for Zandalar, regardless of station.

Mubiru’s eyes narrow.

Bwonsamdi should be happy now. A loa and a king for a kingdom of ruin and despair.

And still not enough souls have been sent to pay off the contract. The earth, for all its bleeding, still hungered.

He sighs and pushes himself to his feet, grabbing Dawnbreaker by the handle for better purchase. It had been Ra’wani’s blade—proud, righteous Ra’wani Kanae, she who had been the most devoted of Rezan’s disciples and led the Prelates in their drills at Atal’Dazar. He had managed to pry the dwarf’s fingers off it while the engineers in the strike squad were racing to dismantle the mole machines blocking the road to Zanchul. Then he chopped off her head—one, two, three—and punted it as hard as he could away from him, hoping the brutosaur that had fled in the stampede got a hold of it.

He wonders how she would feel, using a sword he had no right to earn to cut down the Queen’s—Bwonsamdi’s—enemies.

He wonders how his father and mother would feel, the family spear shattered by the woman who killed the king they served in life.

He wonders what the Warchief is going to do, if at all.

Mubiru slings Dawnbreaker over his shoulders, turns his back to the dying pot of incense, and walks away.

His steps echo far and away throughout the chamber, his silhouette clinging close to him on the walls. There is no point in rushing, no need for the sense of urgency that is otherwise screaming at him to go to Talanji and demand she get a boat ready to chase after the Lord Admiral and hunt her to the ends of Azeroth in the back of his head. Limbs weighed heavy like mud and moving just as much, he drags his feet across the stones, in front of the other. Only the grip on the sword—his sword--is iron-tight.

The predawn light welcomes him, dim and grey. Fog rolls down the stairway. In the air, laden with eager raindrops, sun motes waltz, careless and heedless.

Narina waits for him at the entrance, shield leaning against her front. She’s facing away from him, staring out into the overcast day where the pterradaxes will be chortling their dominance within the hour. Her helmet is tucked under one arm. Dew twinkles in her hair, diamond mischief among the black strands.

Her ears flit up. She turns around, sees him standing just beyond arm’s reach.

Her eyes are wide, almond-shaped. Bright, like the sun.

“Are you alright?” she asks him.

Mubiru blinks, a breath shuttering out of him from the depths of his chest. He shakes his head, lowers Dawnbreaker to his side, and says nothing. Narina watches him, curious, patient.

Finally, he shrugs. “I don’t know,” he answers. “I...I am not sure. But I would like ta be alright. I would like that very much, if I could. That’s it. That is what I want, Narina.”

She nods. “I would like that, too, Mubiru. I think we would all like to be alright.”

She holds out her hand. “Come. The day is young.”

He takes her hand, and lets her pull him up the last step, into the light.


End file.
